The former broadline distributor is collecting partners and building platforms in conjunction with an all-in bet on a high-growth market.

A new CEO for VMware, new security software from HP and Trend Micro, and a vivid reminder of what can happen when a determined four-year-old gets access to an Amazon Prime account are all among the stories we’re belatedly bringing your way.

An online grand opening for the distributor’s IoT Center of Excellence in Irvine, Calif., yesterday was part of a larger effort to get channel pros merely investigating the IoT so far to start building functional proof-of-concepts.

Get ready for a sucker punch of IT news, views, and insights. Joined by guest host Vince Tinnirello, of Anchor Network Solutions, Matt and Rich chew over IT Glue buying TruMethods, Pax8 buying Sea-Level Operations, Sophos entering the XDR market, and Cytracom adding team texting to its UCaaS solution. Then your hosts catch up with Darren Gottesmann of Ingram Micro for a look at the crazy year behind us and the “golden age” we may be entering now.

Using the new capability, technicians who run Pulseway’s mobile app on an iPhone or iPad can restart servers, power off workstations, run scripts, apply patches, and more using only their voice.

Industry-specific solutions leveraging Internet of Things technology are solving pain points and increasing efficiency and safety.

The changes to specializations, incentives, and rewards are interim steps on the road to more sweeping revisions that will take effect a year from now, and reflect NetApp’s ongoing reinvention of itself as a maker of cloud and container storage solutions.

The forthcoming consumer and commercial devices, all bearing up to 11th Generation Intel Core processors, include an updated edition of the 17-inch XPS 17 notebook (pictured).

Rex Frank (pictured), founder and CEO of the managed services consultancy, will become head of Pax8’s partner education unit, which will add one-to-one coaching services to its current lineup of one-to-many training classes.

Both offerings reward users of the company’s Microsoft Azure and Windows Virtual Desktop tools for acquiring new customers, while arming them to land and support additional ones.